


Forever, Whenever

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Post-X3, Reconciliation, Schmoop, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one is set after X3: The Last Stand, so minor spoilers for that, including the bonus scene. All you need to know from X3 is that Erik loses his abilities (supposedly) and Charles gets disintegrated by Jean Grey (again, supposedly). This is what happens afterwards. Happy endings, or at least the promise of them, ahead...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever, Whenever

**Author's Note:**

> Title and closing lines, as always, courtesy of the Foo Fighters; this time, "Walk," because sometimes you need a really obvious song.

This is what he knows: he tried to end the world, to start a new one, to remake everything in blood and fire. He failed.  
             
This is what he knows: that Charles Xavier’s X-Men were triumphant. That the woman known as Jean Grey, the Phoenix, chose her own death, when she could still make a choice. That the world is slowly healing its wounds.  
             
This is what he knows, now: that love, in the end, proved to be stronger than hate. He wishes, now that it is too late, that he could say this to Charles.  
             
He knows that the rest of the world believes him to be powerless. This is not—quite—true.  
             
He knows that Charles Xavier is dead. (But he doesn’t, he can’t, let himself believe it.)  
             
He goes to the same park at the same time every day, and sits at the same chessboard. Some days he tries to make the pieces move, just by willing them to. Some days he just plays. He only plays against himself; some days he used to try playing the other side of the game like Charles might have, but that’s too painful, so he stopped.  
             
Erik Lehnsherr never wears the helmet anymore. But, every day, the man for whom he’s not wearing the helmet doesn’t (can’t ever) (might someday) find him.  
             
He sits in the park, and moves chess pieces with his mind when he can, and with his fingers when his mind fails him.

  
   
It’s one of the bad days, and he’s feeling old and mortal and the game is going poorly on both sides, when a voice says, “Knight to C4, mate in three,” and Erik spins around and almost falls off the bench, because that voice, he knows that voice.  
             
But it’s not Charles, it’s some other man, someone Erik doesn’t recognize. He’s taller than Charles was and has dark hair and stands there casually, hands shoved into his pockets against the cold. Erik doesn’t know him and his heart breaks just a little bit more than he’s used to already.  
             
 _Hello, my friend_ , the man says into Erik’s head, without opening his mouth.  
             
And it’s Charles.  
             
“It _is_ me, I’m afraid,” Charles says, out loud this time, and Erik can _feel_ him, like sunlight and warmth and kindness itself, memories of late nights and chessboards and aged whiskey and laughter, pillows on the floor and sketches of Cerebro pushed recklessly from a desktop, bad choices and good moments, politics and pain and a submarine on a long-ago beach, and bittersweet aching love, through everything, despite everything, always love.  
             
He’s standing (standing!) there smiling hesitantly like he’s unsure of his reception, and the skin is different, the hair is different, the body, everything, and Erik desperately wants to know how and when and why but none of that matters right now because Charles, _Charles_.  
             
He starts to stand up, and his legs don’t quite get the message. Charles hurries over to sit down next to him. _Are you all right? I’m sorry, I know it’s a bit of a shock. It was for me as well, frankly._  
             
His eyes are mostly brown, but there’s a ring of blue around the pupil already. In time, Erik thinks, they’ll be the electric blue that he remembers.  
             
 _I’m all right_ , he says to Charles. It’s more true than it has been for a long time.  
  
He knows that he’s probably staring too intently and he doesn’t care. There are so many things he wants to say and the only words that he can come up with to say them all is, “You have hair.”  
             
Charles grins, a little self-consciously. “So I do. Do you like it?” He actually sounds a bit concerned, as if Erik might say no, I hate it, go away.  
             
Erik will do nothing of the sort.  
             
He doesn’t know what miracle has given him, given them, this moment. He doesn’t know what Charles wants—maybe he’s just here to talk, maybe he just wants closure, maybe he’ll walk (walk!) out of the park again and out of Erik’s life forever once he’s said what he came to say.  
             
It doesn’t matter. He’s had this. He’s been able to see Charles again, and whatever Charles wants, however much he wants to give, Erik will take. It’s more than he ever dreamed he’d have.  
             
But Charles looks worried. It’s an unfamiliar face but it’s a very familiar expression. _Erik?_  
             
 _I’m here_ , Erik reassures him. It’s automatic. Charles shouldn’t look worried. Not ever, not on Erik’s behalf.  
             
Laughter like sweet wine in his head. _Erik, I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you?_  
             
 _Never_ , Erik sends back promptly. And he feels Charles grin.  
             
“Charles,” he manages, throat surprisingly tight, “you—how did you—?”  
             
Charles actually looks a little rueful. “He’s—he was—a patient of Moira’s. Brain-dead; he was in an auto accident. He was a mutant himself, a very low-level telepath; Moira had called me in to see if anything could be done, which is how I knew about him in the first place…”  
             
“So you—”  
             
“I thought I might be able to effect a mental transfer, yes,” Charles says. “It wasn’t easy.” But in Erik’s head he whispers, _I knew I was going to die. And I didn’t want to_. He sounds ashamed of it, ashamed of himself for taking someone else’s body, for being weak enough to want to live. Erik understands, but cannot agree, not when Charles is here and alive and close enough to touch.  
             
And he wants to touch so desperately, but he won’t, not until and unless Charles offers. He lost the right to that a long time ago.  
             
Charles is still talking, quietly, as if he needs to, as if he’s making a confession. “He has—had—no family, and I made sure no one at the hospital remembered…anything, really. Even Moira. It was…easier that way.” And, like a wayward echo, the punctuation of his tired guilt chases his words into Erik’s mind. _Easier, but at yet another cost, another interference with other minds…_  
             
Once, Erik would have laughed at that, pointing out with great glee how easily Charles might slip into unscrupulous behavior after all. Once, Charles would have mustered some impassioned idealistic defense involving necessity and the ethics of self-protection. They’re both a lot older now, and at least one of them is a different person, so Erik doesn’t say any of those things.  
             
Instead he just says _Charles, you’re alive_ , because even though he knows it he still can’t quite believe that this is real. Because Charles will hear and make sense of all the things Erik is thinking: that Erik understands, that Erik won’t dismiss his pain over this decision as ridiculous (as he might have once) but will instead tell him that, in a world of terrible choices, it was the best choice he could have made.  
  
That Charles saved one man who might have died, and allowed another man to pass on peacefully into the dark. That Erik loves him for that compassion.  
  
That Erik loves him, always, if that matters enough to make a difference, even a small one, anymore.  
             
 _It matters_ , Charles says. _Thank you for that_.  
             
 _No need._  
 _  
Nevertheless, thank you, my friend_.  
             
The word sits between them quietly, innocuous as the morning daylight.  
  
A stray sunbeam has found its way onto Charles’s hand. His new skin is darker than Erik remembers; that will take some getting used to. He wonders whether, if he brushed his fingertips across that hand, it would feel different as well. He should stop looking, stop thinking these thoughts that he has no right to think, but he can’t. If he’s truly honest with himself, he doesn’t want to.  
             
Charles reaches out, and takes Erik’s hand in his own.  
             
It is both entirely different, and exactly the same.  
             
The world shivers under their feet, just a little bit, or maybe it’s just Erik’s imagination. He’s been accused of being melodramatic before, after all. But this feels _right_.  
  
It feels, he decides, like a dislocated joint snapping back to the place it should have been all along: they will ache and they will heal and they will learn each other’s scars (old and new) and they will do it all together. Erik is sure of this because Charles is also sure of it; they might be old and tired and wounded but they are alive and they will face being alive together.  
             
“I do have a chessboard back home,” Charles offers, amusement threaded through every syllable. “I’m fairly certain you’re done with these.”  
             
And Erik looks around, in amazement, as the chess pieces dance and tumble in the air, circling the two of them on their bench with a dizzying expression of joy and delight.  
  
He wants to laugh, and to cry, and to hold Charles’s hand in that moment forever.  
             
“Home?” he asks.  
             
“Not the mansion,” Charles answers, almost in the same breath, because of course he knows what Erik’s thinking. “That’s not…not us. Not now, in any case.”  
             
Erik nods. Charles shivers a little, and leans against him on the bench; he’s very thin, and the coat he’s wearing isn’t quite warm enough for the fall morning. Erik puts an arm around him, without even thinking about it, and the chessmen spin a little faster in the air.  
             
“I had a little forewarning,” Charles says, watching them. “Not of this, exactly, of course, but…I knew that something might happen, someday. So I do have some money. And a house in upstate New York. One of the old Xavier family properties, actually, that was sold off years ago; I couldn’t resist, I’m afraid. It doesn’t have much furniture yet, and it needs some renovations…”  
             
“Renovations,” Erik repeats, trying not to think about Charles having premonitions of his own possible annihilation. He might be holding Charles’s hand a little too tightly, but neither of them brings it up. “Perhaps I can be of help with that. If you would like.”  
             
“I would,” Charles says, “like that very much,” and he leans in to kiss Erik, very lightly, like a promise. He’s taller than before, but he kisses the same way, as if the touch of his lips to Erik’s is the only important thing in the world.  
             
 _Come home with me_ , he says, and Erik says _Yes._  
   
  
This is what he knows: that he once tried to end the world, in blood and fire and pain; that   love, in the end, proved stronger than hate.  
             
He knows that the world believes that he is powerless, and that Charles Xavier is dead. Neither of these things is true.  
             
This is what he knows, now: there’s himself, and there is Charles, and a chessboard in a house in need of renovations.  
  
Maybe someday they’ll want to visit the world again. Maybe Charles’s incurable optimism, battered and bent these days but still not shattered, will even lead them to act again, to do something more than just visit the world. It could happen; oddly, Erik finds himself feeling a sense of hope, just a little. Maybe they aren’t that broken after all.  
             
Whatever they choose to do, they’ll do it together. That’s something they both know.  
  
 

 

  
_learning to walk again_   
_I believe I've waited long enough_   
_where do I begin_   
_I'm learning to talk again_   
_can't you see I've waited long enough_   
_where do I begin_


End file.
